LETTERS TO A MEMBER OF THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS. BY A CLERGYMAN OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. No. II. ON BAPTISM. LONDON: W. DARTON AND SON, HOLBORN HILL. 1264 ADVERTISEMENT. LET MOTHE RA A AN Advertisement was prefixed to some copies of the First Letter in this Series, the substance of which it may be adviseable to repeat. The doctrines of Fox, Penn, Barclay, &c., respecting the Indwelling Word, the Universal Saving Light, and the Immediate Operation of the Holy Spirit, have for some years past given rise to great controversy, in the Society of which these remarkable men were the founders. The dispute began in America. A party of Quakers called, from their leader, Hicksites,' openly renounced the doctrines of the Trinity and the Atonement, as incompatible with the peculiar doctrines of their Society. The members of this sect are disowned by their brethren. But, more recently, many English Quakers have contended, that their founders disparaged the doctrines of the Gospel and the authority of Scripture; that their writings involve, if they do not express, the Hicksite heresy; and that they ought to be disclaimed by the Quaker body, The Society is now nearly divided into those who hold those opinions, (though they appear to be rapidly seceding from it), those who assert primitive Quakerism to be the highest and purest Christianity, because it maintains Spiritual Life and teaching against forms, doctrines, and the mere letter of Scripture; and those whose chief object it is, by compromise and conciliation, to preserve the existence of their sect. ADVERTISEMENT. These Letters are respectfully dedicated to all the parties here described. They suggest the only method by which, as the Author believes, the important principles asserted by each, can be reconciled, and the lovers of truth and unity in the Quaker body delivered from hopeless dissatisfaction and division. At the same time, the Author does not pretend to conceal his desire, that the members of his own Communion also may consider the arguments in these Letters, and especially in the one which he now presents to them,—may be led by them better to understand, and more to prize their own principles,—may discover from them that their principles, instead of being the cruel" fetters"* of a foregone age, offer the only hope of freedom to those who are groaning under the heavy bondage of the present. February 1. ERRATA. Page 82, line 8 from top-for should read she. 136, line 9 from bottom-for word read Word. * See a letter from Lord John Russell, his Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department, to the Earl of Burlington, Chancellor of the Metropolitan University. LETTERS TO A MEMBER OF THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS. No. II. MY DEAR FRIEND, In my last letter I endeavoured to shew you that your Friends had been the assertors of some great principles to the disparagement of certain great outward facts-that other sects had asserted these facts to the disparagement of the principles -that the separation had been violent and unnatural-that you, in your attempt to resolve all facts into principles, had made your principles inoperative and almost unmeaning-that they, in order to uphold the facts without the principles, had been driven to inventions and notions unsupported by Scripture, and inconsistent with themselves. I argued, that the grand doctrine of the union between the spirit of man and Christ, is deprived of its efficacy by you, because you do F |